I think that's everything that is relevent, if anything else will help please don't hesitate to ask and I will add information as needed

Secondly, THIS SYSTEM DID WORK!

I can't remember exactly when it all went wrong and as I hadn't been gaming for months it was a kind of irrelevent problem when I did a format (PC Just got clogged and so this was the easy option) and my graphics card didn't display a picture on my monitor, I just took it out and used the Onboard crappy graphics.

I am now faced with a dilemma, SOMETHING isn't right, my PC (without Graphics card installed) just would not progress past the BIOS screen, failing to load drive information etc. Even when I took off everything and tried to boot the board with no other devices present.

First I naturally changed the PSU (Luckily I had another exactly the same model etc) and the same problem existed.

So annoyed, I rifled through my older PC bits n bobs and built up an old 1.8Ghz system with AGP grapics but after realising that with only 1GB of DDR1 it was as useless as band aid for a severed limb, I tried again with my current system. This time it booted!

While I had it running I made sure to download the latest BIOS version, and upgraded.

Now I have the issue of the PCI-E Graphics card not working, except straight after the upgrade of the BIOS it did work BUT it stalled again on the BIOS screen and after a reset it shunned the PCIE graphics again and I was forced to plug the monitor back into the onboard graphics.

This is where I stand now. I have no other PCIE board or Graphics card and only enough cash to buy one or the other for at least a month - And PC components are not easily returned, so should I make the wrong choice on which I buy then I will be forced to meander on agitated and vexed by the situation...

The onboard graphics is useless not only because it's 256mb but also because it randomly cops out filling the screen with erm, imagine an old TV set that is not recieving a signal and you get that white static - Well it's like that, but motionless. And I am then forced to reset the PC and then get back into windows to a graphics error. Or it just Blue screens me....

Sorry for the long post and probably over complicated explaination - But my question is a simple one:

Which would you buy, if you could only choose one? I'm assuming MOBO, but if I buy it and I am stuck with 2 working MOBO's and one broken graphics card I'll be a tad miffed to say the least. Same if I end up with two working graphics card.

So I throw myself at you all hoping you can determine which would be the best place to start?

Yeah, I wish I had that option, but I am the only person in my group of friends/family that is in anyway PC literate, which also makes me the repair guy. But most of them use laptops and only have old desktops prior to PCI-E.

The System mentioned above is now basically dead, it won't boot (except rarely) and won't even let me into the BIOS settings.

I have been demoted to using my laptop only for the time being and I am looking to build a new system ASAP. I started by buying a XFX Easy Rail 80 plus bronze rated 550w PSU yesterday (after resigning to the fact I had killed my PC), after researching the PSU's I owned I realised that they are probably the main cause of all the problems that have occured.

I did rig up my new PSU to the old system but I think that just helped to finish off the components that were already dying.

I'm now on the look out for a decent bundle deal - Motherboard, Processor and Memory. Then I can hopefully get a new graphics card sometime soon after.

Thanks for the suggestion though, and at least something good came out of the situation - I found this website!